Bill Chappell

Bill Chappell is a writer and producer who currently works on The Two Way, NPR's flagship news portal. In the past, he has edited and coordinated digital features for Morning Edition and Fresh Air, in addition to editing the rundown of All Things Considered. He frequently contributes to other NPR blogs, such as All Tech Considered and The Salt.

Chappell's work at NPR has ranged from being the site's first full-time homepage editor to being the lead writer and editor on the London 2012 Olympics blog, The Torch. His assignments have included being the lead web producer for NPR's trip to Asia's Grand Trunk Road, as well as establishing the Peabody Award-winning StoryCorps on NPR.org.

In 2009, Chappell was a key editorial member of the small team that redesigned NPR's web site. One year later, the site won its first Peabody Award, along with the National Press Foundation's Excellence in Online Journalism award.

At NPR, Chappell has trained both digital and radio staff to use digital tools to tell compelling stories, in addition to "evangelizing" — promoting more collaboration between legacy and digital departments.

Prior to joining NPR in late 2003, Chappell worked on the Assignment Desk at CNN International, handling coverage in areas from the Middle East, Asia, Africa, Europe, and Latin America, and coordinating CNN's pool coverage out of Qatar during the Iraq war.

Chappell's work for CNN also included producing Web stories and editing digital video for SI.com, and editing and producing stories for CNN.com's features division.

Before joining CNN, Chappell wrote about movies, restaurants and music for alternative weeklies, in addition to his first job: editing the police blotter.

A holder of bachelor's degrees in English and History from the University of Georgia, he attended graduate school for English Literature at the University of South Carolina.

The triggerman in the drive-by murder of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov has been sentenced to 20 years in prison. The bold killing of Nemtsov, 55, on a bridge near the Kremlin shocked many Russians; questions remain about who reportedly placed a large bounty on his life.

A free speech law center says President Trump and his staff are breaking the law when they block his critics on Twitter. The Knight First Amendment Institute has filed a lawsuit saying the president's Twitter feed is a public forum protected by the First Amendment.

Sales of recreational marijuana have blown past expectations in Nevada, threatening to leave some dispensaries with empty shelves. After Gov. Brian Sandoval endorsed a statement of emergency in the first week of legal sales, regulators are looking to bolster the supply chain.

The Nevada Tax Commission is meeting Thursday to determine whether the state has enough wholesale marijuana distributors; it could also adopt emergency regulations.

Hot and dry conditions in the West are feeding wildfires in the U.S. and Canada, prompting evacuation orders for thousands of people. In California, some 5,000 firefighters are battling 14 large wildfires, state officials say.

"The Whittier Fire, which is burning in the Santa Ynez Valley of Santa Barbara County, is especially concerning for firefighters because it's near hundreds of homes," reports Debra Greene from member station KCLU. "It has already destroyed some structures, and mandatory evacuations are in place."

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi is declaring victory in Mosul, saying that the city where ISIS declared its "caliphate" three years ago has finally been liberated. Fighting is still being reported in part of the northern city on the Tigris River.

"They're now in one particular neighborhood, where the last pockets of ISIS fighters are fighting very hard. It's really their last stand," NPR's Jane Arraf reports from Mosul. "The problem is, there are civilians among them, still at least 2,000 civilians."

President Trump says he "strongly pressed" Russian President Vladimir Putin twice about Russia's meddling in the U.S. election — and that it's now time "to move forward in working constructively with Russia."

That work, Trump said, will include a new ceasefire in Syria, as well as a joint cybersecurity operation. But by Sunday evening he distanced himself from the latter, tweeting, "The fact that President Putin and I discussed a Cyber Security unit doesn't mean I think it can happen."

The G20 Summit ended in Hamburg with affirmation to pursue the Paris climate accord by leaders of the world's strongest economies, minus President Trump.

"The leaders of the other G20 members state that the Paris Agreement is irreversible," reads a declaration adopted on the final day of meetings Saturday, by a group that includes Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China, and which some are now calling the "G19," at least when it comes to the question of climate change.

Tens of thousands of people turned out for the largest protests yet against the G-20 meetings in Hamburg, Germany, Saturday. The peaceful marches contrasted with the violence of Friday night, when rioting and clashes with security forces erupted.

Venezuela's most famous political prisoner is one step closer to freedom, after the country's Supreme Court of Justice granted house arrest to Leopoldo López. The court called it "a humanitarian measure," citing the opposition leader's health.

López, 46, has been serving a nearly 14-year prison term. The surprise move took effect Friday, the court said in a tweet Saturday morning.

A 19-year-old man is now the only person being held in connection to Britain's investigation into the Manchester Arena suicide bomb attack, after being arrested at an airport. He was detained "on suspicion of offenses contrary to the Terrorism Act," the Greater Manchester Police says.

"At it stands 23 people have now been arrested in connection with this investigation, of which two were quickly de-arrested, and 20 were released without charge," according to a police update Friday.

A clash that started with a suicide car bomb at a checkpoint in the northern Sinai Peninsula killed or injured 26 members of Egypt's military and left some 40 militants dead, an Egyptian army spokesman says.

Attorneys general from Massachusetts, New York and 16 other states filed suit against Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her department Thursday, accusing DeVos of breaking federal law and giving free rein to for-profit colleges by rescinding the Borrower Defense Rule.

An earthquake with a magnitude of 5.8 startled many people out of their sleep in western Montana early Thursday. The shallow quake was felt for hundreds of miles from its epicenter southeast of Lincoln, including in parts of neighboring states and in Canada.

"We have no reports of injuries due to the earthquake at this time," member station Montana Public Radio reports. "Shockwaves are still being felt with decreasing intensity in parts of western Montana."

Generations have come and gone under its branches. Its leaves soaked up rays from the sun that shone on the American Colonies. But after an estimated 325 years of life, an oak tree in a residential neighborhood in Washington, D.C., has now fallen victim to time.

Dana Ju, whose young family had been the latest to play under the tree's broad canopy on Washington's Floral Street, says they're "very sad about the tree but feel very fortunate we were not inside our home when it fell."

Sony Music is preparing to make its own vinyl records again in Japan, in another sign that albums are back from the brink of being obsolete. The company says it's installing record-cutting equipment and enlisting the help of older engineers who know how to reproduce the best sound.

Six former officials who oversaw the notorious Hillsborough Stadium disaster of 1989 — when nearly 100 fans were crushed to death — and its aftermath will face charges that range from manslaughter to official misconduct and obstructing justice, British prosecutors said Wednesday.

The "Petya" cyberattack that has now struck computers in at least 65 countries can be traced to a Ukrainian company's tax accounting software, Microsoft says.

"We saw the first infections in Ukraine — more than 12,500 machines encountered the threat," Microsoft says. "We then observed infections in another 64 countries, including Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Russia, and the United States."

The complexity of the attack has fueled debate over whether the malware is a new threat or a more sophisticated version of the Petya malware that was used in an attack last spring.

Ransomware hit at least six countries Tuesday, including Ukraine, where it was blamed for a large and coordinated attack on key parts of the nation's infrastructure, from government agencies and electric grids to stores and banks.

The malware has been called "Petya" — but there is debate in the security community over whether the ransomware is new or a variant that has been enhanced to make it harder to stop.

A federal judge in Michigan has temporarily barred U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from deporting a group of more than 1,400 Iraqi nationals for at least two weeks, expanding an order that initially applied only to those in the Detroit area.

The European Commission has fined Google 2.42 billion euros ($2.72 billion) after finding that the company used its dominant search engine to drive people toward another Google product, its shopping service.

"What Google has done is illegal under EU antitrust rules," said European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager. "It denied other companies the chance to compete on the merits and to innovate. And most importantly, it denied European consumers a genuine choice of services and the full benefits of innovation."

The Democratic Unionist Party has given U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May enough votes to form a government, signing a "confidence and supply" agreement to back May's Conservatives in confidence votes and on key economic issues. The DUP also secured more than $1 billion in economic assistance for Northern Ireland.

"This agreement will operate to deliver a stable government in the United Kingdom's national interest at this vital time," DUP leader Arlene Foster said.

Chinese authorities have granted dissident Liu Xiaobo medical parole, freeing the Nobel Peace Prize winner from prison because he has terminal liver cancer. Liu, 61, is being allowed to seek treatment in a hospital outside of prison.

"According to his lawyer, Liu was diagnosed with late-stage liver cancer while in prison last month," NPR's Rob Schmitz reports from Hong Kong. "[He] is being treated at a hospital in the northeastern city of Shenyang."

Police have charged Darren Osborne with terrorism-related murder and attempted murder over an attack in which investigators say Osborne drove a van into a crowd of people leaving a mosque in north London early Monday.

The fire that devastated a 24-story apartment building last week began by accident — and the source was a refrigerator, London police say. Investigators have also found that materials used on Grenfell Tower's exterior failed safety tests.

"We now have expert evidence that the fire was not started deliberately — the fire started in a fridge-freezer — the make and model is a Hotpoint FF175BP," Detective Superintendent Fiona McCormack said Friday. She added that the refrigerator, which has a freezer on the bottom and refrigerator on top, has not been recalled.

A sniper with Canada's elite special forces is being credited with making a world record shot, after the military confirmed Thursday that he hit a target from nearly 2.2 miles away during a recent operation in Iraq.

Military sources tell Canada's The Globe and Mail newspaper that the sniper killed an ISIS insurgent during an attack on Iraqi security forces.

A naturalized U.S. citizen should not have been stripped of her citizenship for the sole reason that she lied to U.S. officials, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday, vacating a lower court's decision. The plaintiff, an ethnic Serb who entered the U.S. as a refugee, had argued that false answers she gave to immigration officials were immaterial to procuring citizenship.

"We have never read a statute to strip citizenship from someone who met the legal criteria for acquiring it," Justice Elena Kagan wrote in the court's opinion. "We will not start now."

America's diversity remains on the rise, with all racial and ethnic minorities growing faster than whites from 2015 to 2016, the U.S. Census Bureau says in a new snapshot of the national population. The agency also found the U.S. median age has risen to nearly 38.

Asian and mixed-race people are the two fastest-growing segments of the U.S. population, the U.S. Census Bureau says. Both groups grew by 3 percent from July 2015 to July 2016. In the same 12 months, the non-Hispanic white population grew by just 5,000 people.